The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

THE EXPEDITION OF HUMPHRY CLINKER 25
account, but for the sake of my niece, Liddy, who is like to relapse.
The poor creature fell into a fit yesterday, while I was cheapening
a pair of spectacles, with a Jew-pedlar.—I am afraid there is some-
thing still lurking in that little heart of her’s; which I hope a change
of objects will remove. Let me know what you think of this half-
witted Doctor’s impertinent, ridiculous, and absurd notion of my
disorder—So far from being dropsical, I am as lank in the belly as
a grey-hound; and, by measuring my ancle with a pack-thread,
I find the swelling subsides every day—From such doctors, good
Lord deliver us!—I have not yet taken any lodgings in Bath; be-
cause there we can be accommodated at a minute’s warning, and
I shall choose for myself—I need not say your directions for drink-
ing and bathing will be agreeable to,
Dear Lewis,
yours ever,
MAT. BRAMBLE
P. S. I forgot to tell you, that my right ancle pits, a symptom, as
I take it, of its being oedematous, not leucophlegmatic.
To Miss LET T Y WILLIS, at Gloucester
Hot Well, April 21
MY DEAR LETTY,
I DID not intend to trouble you again, till we should be settled at
Bath; but having the occasion of Jarvis, I could not let it slip,
especially as I have something extraordinary to communicate—
O, my dear companion! What shall I tell you? for several days past
there was a Jew-looking man, that plied at the Wells with a box of
spectacles; and he always eyed me so earnestly, that I began to be
very uneasy. At last, he came to our lodgings at Clifton, and
lingered about the door, as if he wanted to speak to somebody—I
was seized with an odd kind of fluttering, and begged Win to throw
herself in his way: but the poor girl has weak nerves, and was
afraid of his beard. My uncle, having occasion for new glasses,
called him up stairs, and was trying a pair of spectacles, when the
man, advancing to me, said, in a whisper—O gracious! what d’ye
think he said?—‘I am Wilson!’ His features struck me that very